School blog

Wilderness Engagement

My friends and I were taking a hike through the Japanese mountains with duke of Edinburgh, We were in the middle of nowhere with no cellar connection and we had gotten a little off track and lost. We were 5 Europeans who did not speak a word of Japanese lost in the middle of nowhere. We did not give up and followed a path that we had found, Until we had reached a little town, high up in the mountains. It was breathtaking, rice fields were stacked on each other with little huts near the ponds with old farmers who had nurtured every single one of their plants individually. There was a great sense of calmness and relaxation everywhere. We had walked up to one of the Japanese farmers and tried to communicate with him which way we needed to walk to find a bus route or train station. The old man had listened carefully and had tried hard to understand our confused sign languages, he then walked away. He turned around after 10 meters and waved at us asking us to follow him, he lead us to a bigger street and pointed us down the hill, gratefully we bowed in front of the man and continued our journey down the hill, just a few moments later we heard noises becoming louder and louder. It was the old grandpa driving his old tractor down the hill, He had again shown us the same wave as before singling us to follow him, so we followed the slow tractor for a good 15 min. Until we arrived at a bus stop, the farmer simply turned around, smiled at us waved goodbye as he made his way back up to his farm which he had left behind for good 20 minutes just to show us strangers the way to the bus stop so we could safely return back home. This though me something truly incredible. Being back in the big city you realize how different life can be. If you where to ask someone here for directions the best you could hope for his a show of hands which way. There is no way no one would ever follow you to your destination. Of course thats not what I would expect because people in the city have busy and fast lives. They rush to the rain to get to work where they need to rush that in order so that they can still make their dinner date at 7 across town to then rush to get back home so that you get enough sleep so you can repeat the same thing the next day. Point is that even if life seems so stressful it is healthy to take a moment, sit down relax help someone or just enjoy the city. Life moves very fast in cities, that doesn’t mean you need to as well. Live life like the farmer in the hills who has the time for strangers, If you can live life not dictated by the environment around you but by your own self-management and peace then I think you can call yourself happy

The journey was not only this, it was actually a 2-day hike, we went from Yokohama too Kamakura and also a separate trip in Hakone where we hiked over the mountain tops. We needed to make a video documentation so I also have a 4-minute video of some clips that we shot during our trip. I did not film anything with the farmer in it because I felt like that would be disrespectful, But in the video you can see the bamboo walls, the burned down houses in the village and a short sequence during the end of the video we where walk along the little road the village had down to the bus ride, here is the video; Enjoy,